November blizzards...........

A load more snow today scuppered my plans to photograph the eagles up in Yakumo...................

2017 Best Of #4

Some more shots from earlier in the year: these are all from March and early April...............

2017 Best Of #2

Some shots from Jan/Feb this year.............

Saturday afternoon in Onuma

A Goldcrest in Onuma this afternoon......................

Some more SMIFs

I spent another afternoon with the Smew on Monday.......................

The Smifs

Very sunny weather the last couple of days...................

It hadn't left............

We spent the day in Onuma...............

Not as busy on the bridge................

We were back in Yakumo on Monday...................

Monochrome weekend

It was a grey and rather overcast weekend..............

Another Sunday with the eagles #3

I took the teleconverter off...............

Another Sunday with the eagles #1

The weather was still very mild on Sunday so I had another chance with the eagles at Yakumo...............

Late winter continues........

Some Smew at Onuma this afternoon..................

A Sunday morning date with a redhead

A rather cold Sunday morning saw us in Onuma................

Geese etc

A very springlike day in south Hokkaido this Sunday.................

On this day (January 29th)..........................

January 30th 2012

A drake Smew at Onuma 3 years ago today. Normally very shy I surprised this one (it was with a female) and he was so unsure what to do he didn't fly off for a few seconds allowing me to take this close up shot (only very slight cropping). Not perfect but much better than my recent efforts with this species.................just a shame it was so dark.

A quiet Sunday in Onuma............

A pair of Black Woodpeckers in Onuma this afternoon..................

Assorted Pondlife

A quiet end to the week, more snow and grey skies.........

This morning we were at Onuma. The ice-free pond held 3 Smew, 1 Great Egret and 2 Night Heron. The snow from the nearby car park has been dumped next to the pond meaning it is impossible to get close to the birds...........not such a problem for a bog one like the Great Egret.

But more of a problem for the Smew and Night Heron..........

As you can see it was snowing heavily at times, here's a video where the birds don't move much but the snow does............



Not much else around plus today was Onuma's winter festival so to avoid the crowds we headed up to Yakumo. Last February I had a couple of great days here taking dramatic photos of the many eagles and other raptors. Today was............................nowhere near as good. I was hoping last week's poor eagle showing at Yakumo had been a one off but unfortunately today was the same. Not many eagles at all, about 3 or 4 Stellers (all too far off for photos) and a dozen or so White Tailed Eagles of various ages.

I don't know where they've all gone, I guess they ate all the salmon and have dispersed around the coasts looking for food.

Not much else here, a distant Goshawk and several more Great Egret bring the most noteworthy.

Last Friday after the Rough Legged Buzzard we ended up at the botanical gardens in Yunokawa. This place has an outside hot spring full of monkeys (Japanese Macaque I think). They are all in an enclosure and are obviously not wild, in fact basically it's a small monkey only zoo. There are some genuinely wild ones who sit around in hot springs in the snow but they are down in Honshu somewhere.

So with all that in mind they are still very good photographic subjects.

The steam from the hot spring and the high ISO I was using in the gloomy kight produced a nice grainy effect............

Whilst it all looks very tranquil it is a fairly stinky place and up close the monkeys don't look very healthy at all, must be all that junk food the tourists lob at them.

Can England win the 3rd test and salvage a little pride? They had Pakistan at 21 for 5 on the first morning's play, how could they look like certainties to lose from that position? They'd better bat out of their skins tomorrow. England- the world's #1 team. Except in Asia. Or when they have to play against decent spinners.

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Still f*****g freezing

Still really cold here, minus 14 when we headed out this morning. The kearashi (mist rising from the sea on the coldest winter days) was visible near Hakodate at sunrise.

I headed up to Yakumo with a friend to have another go at the eagles but it was a disappointing day. Some hunters were upstream and although they weren't shooting the eagles the noise of the gunshots scared all the eagles away. There weren't many at the rivermouth either, here the river was frozen solid. Here is the only eagle that came close...........and it wasn't so close either.

I was reduced to looking for Black Kites, oh the shame.

We headed down to Sawara. My friend wanted some new birds to photograph (he is new to the hobby) so I found him some Gulls, he'd never seen Glaucous or Glaucous Winged.

This was in a nasty stinky seafood processing plant. The staff throw out fish heads and fish tails to the masses of gulls, crows and kites.

It was difficult pointing out the different guls in the chaos of birds, fish heads and bird shit.
"Look, at the back, the grey one with its mouth open......that's a washikamome (Glaucous Winged Gull)!!!!"

Here's one among the fish heads. Nice.

This young Glaucous Gull looked small and dainty, maybe from one of the smaller subspecies?

We then went on to a nearby harbour. This place is also covered with bird shit but has some nicer birds...........like these Black Scoter. The top one dived and caught some kind of shellfish.

Also around here were White Tailed Eagle, Scaup, Goldeneye, Harlequin Duck and Black Necked Grebe.

We then went to Onuma and got luckier with the Smew. The afternoon seems to be the best time to photograph them, no mist on the pond and better light.

I tried to get the pair of them in the same shot........

The young Night Heron was here too........

The day finished with the tame Nuthatches...........

Not much in town last week. White Tailed Eagle, Whooper Swan and Great Egret at Kamiiso 2 days ago but no photos. The weather was so nasty that the train was delayed about 15 minutes. That is major news in Japan let me tell you. In Hakodate last week there were 3 species of Heron and 6 species of duck on the river but no Waxwings yet............at least the Dusky Thrush numbers are increasing.

I watched in horror as England collapsed against Pakistan yesterday, guess we're only #1 if you don't count any games played in Asia then. I popped out to the shop when we were 12 without loss and when I came back 4 wickets were down! Embarrassing.

At least Liverpool beat Man Utd.

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